


day i die

by gardensong



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: M/M, zombie apocalypse AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 14:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20949524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardensong/pseuds/gardensong
Summary: He’d gotten too used to looking at Zuko without worrying about being attacked, apparently. It didn’t seem like a bad thing. Maybe it should seem like a bad thing.zombie apocalypse au





	day i die

**Author's Note:**

> hello, welcome to my niche! zukka in the zombie apocalypse!
> 
> this is a calm, in-between moment in the apocalypse. just two bros, keeping lookout...
> 
> title from the song of the same name by the national, cuz i dont do titles

It was Sokka’s turn to be the lookout for the first chunk of the night, and he hated being lookout. This was mostly because he loved sleep. Nevertheless, no matter how much he might complain, he understood that it had to be done and took it seriously. Even if it was supremely boring. After a whole year on the run, he'd learned how to stay awake, which came from learning that bad things happened when he didn't.

Something rustled somewhere nearby, and Sokka straightened his posture ever-so-slightly, his hand tightening around the pocketknife in his hand. When nothing emerged from the brush after a solid minute, he relaxed again, sighing heavily as he leaned back against the rock.

Aang, Katara and the others were at camp a good few minutes from here, in an underground cave that at some point had belonged to mountain lions. Lions that Aang assured them would not be back anytime soon. For some reason, the bald thirteen year-old’s reassurance hadn’t been enough to calm Sokka’s nerves, so for tonight’s watch he had added mountain lions to his list of things to watch out for. This list was usually limited to two-to-three things: zombies, Sozin Labs employees and/or Hunters. Sozin Labs and Hunters were different kinds of evil: while one wanted Aang to experiment on (and possibly murder) and sell a cure to zombification to only the highest of bidders, the other simply thrived on havok and, horrifyingly, cannibalism. While Sokka hated Sozin Labs, Ozai, everything they stood for and everyone working for them, he would take their flame symbol (the company’s logo) over a Hunter any day. 

The camp the gang had set up today was riskier than usual, angry homeless mountain lions aside, due to the fact that if they were caught in there, there would be no escape. Staying there hadn’t been Sokka’s idea, and he didn’t like it. To the new guy’s credit, he hadn’t seemed up for it, either… but as a group of teenage runaways in a post-apocalyptic world, their options for shelter were limited, and travelling by night was near impossible when everyone in your group was complaining about aching feet. Sokka sorely missed last week, when they had stayed at an abandoned four star hotel in the city. It had been dangerous, sure, but at least there had been baths, frozen food and some semblance of privacy.

Now he was freezing his ass off in the north of Nevada, sitting halfway up a rock partially concealed by dry plants that had scratched his bare hands when he climbed up, poking his own leg with the corkscrew of his pocketknife every so often to stay awake.

At least the stars looked pretty.

He had his eyes closed, only for a moment, when the bushes below rustled again. He was then able to make out footsteps that were quickly approaching, and leaned over to get a better look at who was below him. The panic that had been rising in his stomach settled, however, as soon as he caught sight the familiar mop of jet black hair and impeccable posture.

Zuko, son of Ozai, head of Sozin’s lab. He was part of the gang now, although he hadn’t always been. Sokka wasn’t as suspicious of him as his sister was, not by a mile, and when all Zuko did was walk a couple more feet until he reached the edge of the ridge, his leniency was justified.

Sokka then found himself in quite an uncomfortable position with Zuko standing a few feet below, looking up at the stars in silence. It looked like a pretty private moment. What if he started crying, or something? If Sokka spied on Zuko crying, no matter how reluctantly, he would never be able to look him in the face again. And, to his chagrin, he was kind of becoming fond of the guy’s face.

He stood up and cupped his mouth with his hands.

“Psst,” he called.

Zuko almost jumped out of his skin.

“Oh, my god,” Zuko said as soon as his eyes narrowed on where Sokka now stood, exposed to anyone whose eyes had adjusted to the moonlight. “I didn’t see you there.”

“That’s kind of the idea,” Sokka replied with a shrug. Then, he waved his hand in invitation. “Come on up.”

Zuko looked even more startled at the invitation than when Sokka had made his presence known. After a moment's hesitation, however, he made his way over and began climbing. Sokka thought of lending a hand to help him up, but thinking about it was overthinking it, and he decided to do nothing at all, instead sitting back in his place and waiting for Zuko to manage on his own. It wasn’t like Zuko needed the help, anyway. He arrived easily, not swearing under his breath at the scratches on his palms the way Sokka had.

He sat beside Sokka carefully, drawing his knees up to his chest. He wrapped his arms around them, and then dropped them, leaning back. After another moment passed, he licked his lips and looked around at their surroundings, which was when Sokka realized he was staring. He’d gotten too used to looking at Zuko without worrying about being attacked, apparently. It didn’t seem like a bad thing. Maybe it should seem like a bad thing.

“You keep guard every night?” Zuko asked. Sokka shrugged.

“We kind of take turns.”

Zuko nodded, digesting this information.

“And you all decided you couldn’t trust me to do it.”

“Well… it wasn’t a verbal agreement,” Sokka said fairly. “It just… never came up.” It was the truth. After Zuko joined, they had just kept doing the rounds the way they always had. Sokka, Aang, Toph, then Katara. And repeat. “But hey. You’re free to keep me company tonight. If you want, that is.”

“I can’t sleep,” Zuko said. There was a flutter in Sokka’s chest. He was sure that meant Zuko would stay.

“I get that sometimes, too. It’s hard to relax when you’re worried about getting your brains eaten out. I mean eaten. Just eaten.”

“Yeah,” Zuko said quietly, resting his chin on his knees, unaware of Sokka’s mishap. Sokka guessed then that the zombies weren’t the thing keeping him up at night. At least, not the most pressing thing.

“You don’t, uh…” Sokka began, then chickened out. “You know.”

Zuko looked over him, arching his good eyebrow. Sokka was tired, and somehow unprepared to have Zuko’s full attention on him. He swallowed.

“Do you miss… uh… anyone?”

“I don’t regret joining you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I wasn’t. I mean. I was. I don’t know. It’s just that I can’t imagine… having a family like that.”

“A family like mine,” Zuko clarified.

Sokka said nothing. Zuko didn’t seem annoyed by the line of questioning, which was something. He just seemed thoughtful.

“I do miss my uncle. And I miss… belonging. Even though it was an act, or a mistake... I belonged somewhere. At least on the surface.”

When Sokka had first met Zuko, the other boy had been surrounded by what appeared to be, (and for all intents and purposes _ was _) an army. He was just a kid, like Sokka was, but flanked by men and women all wearing matching bulletproof vests with the Sozin Labs logo embroidered across the heart. Sokka supposed Zuko had belonged there. His vest had matched everyone else’s, and they all moved in the same direction. Towards Aang.

Sokka and Katara had stood between them.

“Well,” Sokka said. “You belong with us now.”

Zuko laughed a little at that, and Sokka gave him a questioning look, trying to hide his hurt.

“Let’s be honest,” Zuko said, tilting his head. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have valuable information.” Because they wouldn’t have let him stay.

“Well... that might have been true at first,” Sokka said. “But you gotta know that you’re one of us now! Part of the gang!”

Zuko shook his head, and Sokka insisted. “You are! Some of us have grown really fond of you.”

“Okay,” Zuko surrendered, looking down as if to hide a smile. The guy really did have a nice smile. Sokka remembers completely freaking out the first time he saw it. Aang had made some awful pun and to this day Sokka wasn’t sure if Zuko had been laughing with him or at him. But before then, Sokka never thought Zuko even knew _ how _ to smile.

“How’s your arm?” Sokka said next. He was just full of surprises tonight, apparently. He was as confused as Zuko seemed to be at the change of subject.

“Oh, it’s uh... healing,” Zuko said, not sounding sure. He brought his forearm to his chest as if to inspect it, but didn’t roll up the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Want me to take a look at it?”

“You’re not busy?” Zuko asked, casting a concerned look at the rocky hillside below.

“More like bored out of my mind. Come on. I’m no Katara, but I’ve learnt a few things over the years.”

He didn’t bring up the fact that one of his learning experiences was born out of an incident with a bullet from Zuko’s own gun. He didn’t need to, either. The guy had cast enough guilty looks his way since he caught a look at the scar on Sokka’s back a few weeks ago.

“It’s probably better you’re no Katara,” Zuko was saying now, unzipping his hoodie and pulling his arm free. When Sokka raised an eyebrow, he mumbled, “I’ve had stitches before. The nurse I had then didn’t grind his teeth so much.”

“She’s pretty stubborn, but believe it or not, I think teeth-grinding is a step up.”

Zuko let out a breath of a laugh, then winced when Sokka touched his arm. 

“Sorry,” he said, letting go, but Zuko shook his head.

“Your hands are cold.” He was no longer meeting his eye.

“Oh.”

“It’s okay.”

His eyes flickered up, as to reassure him, and Sokka touched his arm again.

“Anyway,” he said, keeping his tone conversational as he leaned in to inspect the stitches, “she was probably just pissed that you performed surgery on yourself.”

A few days ago, while the rest of them had been raiding an abandoned Gas Station, Zuko had suddenly locked himself in a bathroom and extracted a small chip from the inside of his arm. The cut had been deep, and Sokka hadn’t seen that much blood in a while. Even Katara had gone pale before barking at Aang to go get supplies.

“I didn’t want to bother anyone,” Zuko said as Sokka turned his arm this way at that, trying to get a better look at the thread in the moonlight.

Sokka shook his head. “Bullshit. You just weren’t thinking ahead.”

Zuko didn’t have a response to that. Sokka got why Katara had been mad: she was scared, scared for Zuko. Sokka, on the other hand, had understood why he’d done it and forgiven the guy immediately. Immediately after it became clear he wasn’t going to die, that was. If _ he _ suddenly found out that he had a chip in his arm that was giving away their position to the people who were tracking them down, he might have taken a knife to his arm then and there, too. Or maybe not. Either way, although it was a stupid thing to do, it was pretty noble, too. Stupid, but noble. Since that day, he’d had a hard time feeling any sort of resentment towards Zuko at all. And he knew that Katara, for all her huffing and puffing, was going through the same thing.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Zuko said as he shrugged his hoodie back on.

“What?” Sokka asked absently.

“Look at my arm.”

“Oh. Yeah. I know.” He swallowed and swerved to sit facing forward once again. What was he supposed to say? I just wanted to get closer to you? No. _ That _ would be stupid. Maybe even more stupid than sticking a knife in your own arm.

The crickets around them seemed to grow louder, their creaking echoing in Sokka’s ears.

“When you said...” Zuko began from beside him, his voice low as if caught in the back of his throat, “some of you have, uh… grown fond of me.” He said that last part like it was a question.

So, Sokka answered.

“I meant me,” he admitted. “I mean, Aang, too, obviously, and Toph wasn’t there when you were _ really _ evil, so she’s cool—“ he was rambling. “But yeah. I’ve, uh... I like you, now.”

“I like you, too.”

Happiness unprecedented flooded through him, rising to fight off the desert chill.

“Cool,” he said. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling. He chanced a look at Zuko and saw that was smiling, too. When Zuko began to look at him, he looked away. “You know, I think, if this whole thing hadn't happened,” he didn't need to specify what, “and we’d like, ran into each other somewhere. I think we would have gotten along.”

“I don't know,” Zuko said. Although Sokka wasn’t looking, he could hear the smile in his voice. “I was kind of an asshole.”

“So was I,” said Sokka. Zuko snorted, which made his stomach flip, and said, “No, you weren’t.”

“Yeah! I was! I mean, ask Katara! Suki! I was super sexist and, like, an idiot a lot of the time... don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said, although he didn’t sound it. God, he looked devastating when he smiled. “Maybe we would have been friends,” he allowed, modelling his smile into something kinder. 

“_ Thank you _!” Sokka said, relaxing his shoulders as if that were all he had been after.

The moon was bright out, and Zuko’s eyes seemed to sparkle. Sokka looked between the brush in front of him and the boy beside him over and over, gaze settling on neither for too long.

And then, it was like jumping into a swimming pool when you knew the water was cold; like pulling the trigger on a face you knew when they were living. His mind took a backseat to everything else, and in one sweeping motion he turned to the side, left palm pressing into the gravel, right palm cupping Zuko’s face, and kissed him.

It was a quick, chaste kiss. The second Sokka pressed his lips against Zuko’s, shock rattled through him, causing him to jump back in a panic almost immediately. He had made a mistake, he had been imagining it, Zuko was just being friendly in a normal, guy-friend way— just because Sokka had never had a guy friend, and zombies were eating everyone, and Zuko’s eyes were so, so sparkly—

“I-uh-sorry,” he stammered, and his goddamn voice _ cracked _, why did it have to—

Zuko grabbed a fistful of Sokka’s sweatshirt pressed their mouths together once more. Sokka’s eyes were wide for a whole second before he wrapped his hand around Zuko’s arm to ground himself, heart thudding in his chest. Zuko’s mouth was warm, and the kiss was harsher than Sokka was used to, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t like it. Sokka had to break the kiss to stop his leg from cramping, and Zuko, lips red and shining, shifted to meet him. He went down as Sokka gently pushed him back onto the floor, and Sokka lay atop him, his leg slotted between Zuko’s, his elbows on either side of Zuko’s head.

Zuko looked up at him, breathless and grinning, and Sokka couldn’t help but smile to match before kissing him again. Zuko wrapped his arms around Sokka’s neck and Sokka couldn’t remember being happier. Here was Zuko, the boy he’d been losing his mind over for the past few months, laughing into his mouth and holding onto him tight.

“I like you,” Sokka breathed, hovering over Zuko to get a clearer look at his face. His pupils were blown and he looked happy. Sokka had never seen him look this happy. _ I did that _, he thought. The idea was almost too much to bear. He leaned in again and brushed their noses together, not realizing that he wasn’t expecting a response until he got one.

“I like you, too,” Zuko said, and he tugged on Sokka’s wolf’s tail as he did. Good, good.

Sokka swallowed. His forearms were beginning to hurt from supporting his own weight, but he needed to see the other boy’s face.

“In, like, a… boyfriend kind of way?” He didn’t mean for it to come out as a question.

Zuko gazed at him in wonderment. A stray strand of his hair lay across his left eye. Sokka couldn’t believe how obsessed he was with everything about this boy, who had once been his mortal enemy. He wanted to be close enough to pick out the different tones of gold in his irises.

“Seriously?” Zuko said.

Sokka’s skin already felt as if it were on fire, but now it felt positively volcanic. “I, uh… I know it’s the apocalypse, and all—”

“Uh… guys?”

Sokka’s arms gave out beneath him and he fell face first into Zuko. His forehead hit Zuko’s nose _ hard _, and both boys groaned in pain while attempting to untangle themselves from each other. 

“Fuck, shit,” Sokka swore, rubbing his forehead and scooting away from Zuko, who was similarly rubbing his own nose. “Oh, my god. Aang! Knock next time, will ya?”

Aang was standing awkwardly on the hill, only a foot away from them, completely frozen. The gravel under his feet shifted, which brought him out of his stupor, and he clambered up the remaining part of the hill until he was stood at Sokka and Zuko’s feet.

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at them, then behind him at the way he came. “Um…”

Zuko, sat on the ground beside Sokka with his legs splayed ridiculously out in front of him, began, “We were just–”

“It’s my turn to keep watch,” Aang cut him off. Sokka nodded.

“Cool. Cool.”

In the silence that followed, it felt like even the crickets were too chicken to speak up.

After sharing a guilty look, both older boys struggled to their feet, avoiding Aang’s gaze as they brushed off the dirt that now coated their clothes.

“So, we’re just gonna—“ Sokka began.

“Yeah, we should—“ Zuko added.

“Yeah,” Aang agreed.

Sokka let out an uneasy breath, then looked over at Zuko. The guy had gone full pink. Jesus Christ, he was hot.

Zuko was closest to the edge, so he went first. Sokka followed, mind torn between _ shit _ , _ Aang saw _, and what he and Zuko were going to do when they reached the bottom of the cliff.

But he had barely begun his descent when Aang spoke up again.

“Uh, guys?” he said, like an afterthought.

“Yeah?” Zuko said from below Sokka. “Yes?” Sokka said at the same time.

Aang stood above them, looking as uneasy as Sokka realized he himself should feel.

“Do I… do I have to lie to Katara? I can’t lie to Katara. I’m a terrible liar.”

He looked so earnest. It made Sokka laugh. Zuko laughed, too. This seemed to annoy the boy, the one who was immune, the one who possibly held the key to the Cure.

“You two are the worst lookouts ever,” he said, uneasiness dispelling. “How would you like it if me and—”

“You sure you wanna finish that sentence?” Sokka interrupted, and although it was dark, and Aang was up there and Sokka was down here, Sokka could have sworn he saw Aang’s head turn red.

Aang mumbled something unintelligible, then gave them an odd little wave that Sokka took to mean that they were dismissed. He looked down behind him at Zuko, who was smirking, and they both continued their descent downwards.

“G’night, Aang,” he said cheerily.

Aang grumbled in response, and sat down out of sight.

Zuko stood waiting for him at the bottom, and Sokka wondered if it would be alright to start kissing again. But Zuko wasn’t smiling, so Sokka simply took a step closer to him and waited.

“You don’t have to,” Zuko said after a moment. His eyes flickered up towards the hill, to where Aang was. “Tell your sister, I mean.”

“I’ll tell her,” Sokka shrugged. “And she’ll have to deal with it.”

He took another step closer, then took Zuko’s hands in his.

Zuko’s eyes flitted towards Sokka’s mouth, and that was all the encouragement Sokka needed. He knocked his knees against Zuko’s and walked him backwards, back down the path leaving towards their cave and out of sight from where Aang might see. When he deemed they were safe, he moved his hands to Zuko’s hips and closed the gap between them, gently knocking their noses together and pressing his lips to Zuko’s. The kiss was slow and sweet, the hearth in Sokka's chest vibrating with warmth.

“Okay,” Zuko breathed, resting his forehead against Sokka's. Sokka could barely remember what Zuko was referring to.

“Okay?” he asked. Zuko nodded.

“Okay.” Zuko swallowed, and seemed to be fighting a smile when he said, “I really like you.”

“Good,” Sokka beamed, kicking Zuko’s boot gently with his own. “‘Cause this would have gotten kind of awkward if you didn’t.”

Zuko let out a breathy laugh. He then lifted his hand, as if to touch Sokka’s face, but instead dropped it onto his shoulder.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked, voice softer than it had been. Sokka squeezed his shoulders and shrugged, thinking about how much they'd lost already, how much they still might lose.

“Dude. It’s the end of the world. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! comments r much appreciated as always x


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